Our dishwasher is really not that great. I don’t know if it’s the water pressure or the soap I use or our local water. But dishes weren’t clean. Time was wasted. And it was a growing frustration trying to get the clean and the unclean dishes sorted out before my son climbed into the dishwasher to try to eat remaining food particles. Did I say frustration?
One day my husband was home and he doesn’t like to watch me suffer through my daily tasks so he ran dish water in the sink. And he washed the dishes.
And he was home for 3 days. So he did this after every meal each of those three days. He’s definitely a lead-by-example kind of fella.
Before he went back to work, he suggested that I consider doing the dishes by hand. Normally, I would sulk, give a few reasons why it wouldn’t work, and maybe do it once before loading the dishwasher again.
Only this time I decided to just try it. Just to see how it went.
And not one, but two amazing things have come out of me washing the dishes by hand.
1. The dishes are actually CLEAN! So my kitchen is actually clean. And I’m not waiting till the kids are napping to do dishes and let them stack up all day. I just do them after we eat. AND if I don’t get to them because of school or we have a bunch of people over, the dishwasher is still right there.
2. I found more intentional quiet time in my day. The first weeks of washing the dishes, if the kids were asleep, I’d turn a show on just for noise. But my back was to the TV and I found myself doing the dishes very slowly. So I put on my ‘All Sons and Daughters’ Pandora station on my phone. Then I found out that the Bible App will play the Bible for me. So I started listening to that. Someone at Bible study gave me some memory verse cards and I taped them to the window to memorize. Then I grabbed a little white board out of the kids’ stuff and put it on my window sill with prayers and things that are on my mind.
I turned chore time into quiet time.
Yes, the kids are usually awake and buzzing around. Yes, I’m also doing something else. Yes, sometimes because of those things or my phone ringing or how my brain works I still get distracted.
But…
…by choosing to put memory verses, a prayer board, and my Bible app right in front of me while I work, I can quickly come back to where I was.
And this is so not me. This is so God growing in me the desire to spend more and more time seeing Him in everything that I’m doing – seeing it as worship.
[Did you check out the video from last week? You definitely should!]
And I totally see this as Intentional Simplicity – something I’m really passionate about. Intentionally using something I’m already doing and looking at it differently so that I’m not always feeling like I’m adding more to my plate. This gives me simplicity and amazing grace and growth. Thank you Jesus!
So this is my #intentionalsimplicity this week. What’s yours? I dare you to share it! You can send a tweet @LeahHeffner #intentionalsimplicity . Maybe you put a verse on the bathroom mirror. Or maybe you have a hymn you like to sing when you start to feel anxious. Or a special Pandora station.Or maybe you have a great idea of something you’d like to start. Share it! I’d love to see what you all are doing and encourage one another that it doesn’t have to be complicated to be meaningful.
So blessed to be journeying alongside all of you!
Kimber says
Hair drying time=prayer time (and for me…that’s a good chunk of time)